Ravens of Eternity

121 Pit of Vipers, Pt Eva hopped down from her opponent’s lifeless corpse, her breaths hot and heavy. Her little stunt had easily eaten away half of her stamina, and her breathing had become incredibly labored to compensate. What she needed was some extra time to get as much as she could back, at least before her next fight.

She walked over to the side of the ring, where Szereth and Severas were standing.

“You know,” said Severas, “more than half these thugs didn’t understand you, right?”

“What? Ugh! But I had my pose down and everything!”

“Not every Drogar’s equipped with translation nanites,” added Szereth. “Usually only traders, politicians, soldiers, mercs, and so on. People who deal with the border. Deep in the core, though?”

“Did I at least sound threatening? I mean, standing on his body and yelling counts for something, right?”

Szereth nodded, but rather half-heartedly. But before he could respond, a random Drogar off to the side shouted at them.

“Hey!” he screamed. “I’ll challenge you, you ape!”

A couple others joined the random Drogar and issued their own profanity-laced challenges as well.

.....

Eva turned back to Szereth and Severas with a wide grin on her face.

“See, it worked!” she said. “All we needed was someone hot-headed enough to challenge me, right? Well, we’ve got a few suitors!”

“Sure,” said Szereth. “Probably those soldiers and mercs I just told you about. You know, highly trained murder machines. You should’ve come at this more carefully!”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” replied Eva. “Anyway, what now? Which one do I pick? Do I just randomly pick one of ’em? And should I stretch out this fight or end it quickly?”

Szereth rubbed on his chin spines.

“Save the theatrics for after you’re seeded,” he replied. “There’s gonna be a whole lot of people who want to see you go down, and we’ll use their bets to up your odds.”

“Wait. You want me to rile up the anti-human speciests?”

“For money, yes. They lose, you win. As long as you don’t die.”

Eva thought briefly about the pros and cons. She stopped the moment she realized she could pound a few of them into the sand herself.

“Yeah, I’m down for this plan,” she said.

Szereth’s brows leapt up when he realized that Eva’s breathing was far too heavy for his own comfort.

“Are you fatigued?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah, well, cutting a guy’s head off at supersonic speed took a lot outta me. Cut me a little slack!”

“Did it occur to you that you didn’t need to cut his head off quite that fast?”

“Hey!” yelled one of the Drogar challengers. “You gonna fight or what?”

“Calm down!” Eva yelled back. “Gotta talk tactics with my team! Damn!”

Since a number of them didn’t understand her, they continued jeering for her attention, so Severas ended up translating for her. If anything could calm down a rowdy crowd, it was a Justicar.

She uttered a few words at them which perfectly reflected what Eva had said. But perhaps a touch more eloquently. When she was done, she turned back to Eva.

“You’ve got quite a number of admirers,” she said. “Want me to tell them anything else?”

“I dunno,” answered Eva, “maybe get them fighting each other somehow? It’ll give me time to catch my breath and figure out who to fight next.”

Severas nodded, then turned back to the challengers.

“Ra’ventrii isn’t interested in bothering with riffraff like yourselves,” she told them, “instead, she much prefers intelligent prey. Says those are much more fun to take apart. If you show her how brilliant a duelist you are, maybe she’ll fight you.”

“Hey, you’re making me sound like some kind of monster,” Eva muttered.

A number of challengers immediately looked at each other and sized each other up. Small squabbles eventually broke out regarding who was the smarter duelist. Those ended up becoming full-on challenges, some of which were accepted.

There were a few who didn’t participate in the squabbles, and instead shook their heads at the denseness of their compatriots. If they challenged someone else, they lost their ability to challenge her.

“Thank the heavens for meatheads,” said Szereth. “Well that certainly thinned out some of them. Who’re you gonna go for?”

Eva’s breathing eventually returned back to an even pace, but she was still a few minutes away from full stamina again.

“Does it even matter who I knock out next?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” answered her Seed Judge. “Everyone here has a soft ranking – seed potential, if you will. It’s always in flux due to the sheer amount of attrition, but basically, if you beat someone with higher potential, then you get a higher starting Seed position.”

“Oh, well that makes it easy. Which of my challengers have the highest seed potential?”

The Judge scanned her datapad, then looked over Eva’s challengers one by one. She swiped through the profiles, and automatically scrubbed out the lowest ones. When she only had one profile left, she pointed at the challenger.

He was a tall and lean Drogar off to the side a bit. He had issued his challenge early on, but never rose to the nonsense that the other challengers got into.

“Alright,” said Eva. “Accept his challenge, and let’s get this show going.”

Her Seed Judge then walked over to the challenger’s Judge, worked out the logistics of their match, then approved it with little pomp and circumstance. They ushered the two duelists into a nearby ring and began the match.

A chorus of groans from the other challengers rose into the air as the two faced off against each other.

Eva bowed, but the Drogar didn’t.

“No need to bow to a dead ape,” he said. “I’ll make sure you never sully the real arena floor with your filth.”

“Are you being serious, or just shittalking?” asked Eva. “Because I can’t tell.”

He didn’t bother to respond to her, and instead sprang forward with controlled fury. Because he was wielding a long blade, he had an incredible amount of reach. With that advantage, he was able to keep Eva on the defensive.

She was certainly able to keep evading, but just barely. And she could also keep parrying, but the strength of his blows pushed her back more and more.

The footwork that Talyss had burned into her was more than invaluable here. She moved with such grace and speed that she was able to continually circle around as she evaded. The movements of her dance allowed her to naturally dodge most of his strikes.

And that gave her intuition time to catch up, to guide her closer towards victory.

She predicted her opponent’s movements, saw the trajectories of each of his strikes, and in a moment where his defenses were lowest, she struck.

Eva launched forward and threw a sweeping kick at the Drogar, and followed up with an upwards slash aimed at his throat.

But instead of getting unbalanced by her kick, he dove in the direction of his fall, and instead rolled over his shoulder and evaded her expertly.

Eva’s blade sliced nothing but air.

So she backed up a step and reassessed her options.

Their disparity in size and reach was a real hindrance, even if her skill level was higher. Combined with the fact that he was using his power armor in full, and she wasn’t... Basically, she came up short.

Maybe I should provoke him into fucking up? Then I could use that opening to get inside his defenses and take him out?

“Weren’t you saying something about ending me?” she said. “Looks like I’m still here.”

She brushed off her robe for full effect. But all the Drogar did in response was hiss at her. Maybe he didn’t understand what she was saying?

The Drogar certainly looked angry, but not angry enough to expose himself. Clearly, he was treating her like an actual opponent.

She grinned like a madwoman when she realized he had listened to Severas’ words – he actually was a smart duelist. Well, smarter than the others, anyway.

Eva gauged her stamina. It wasn’t back to full quite yet, but she didn’t need to dump excessive amounts of energy at once for a single, unstoppable kill shot. All she needed to do was put in a bit extra into her strikes. Just needed an extra edge.

Double was enough for a few seconds, right?

So she sheathed her beltknife and cracked her knuckles as she breathed in. When she exhaled, she felt power expand outwards from deep within her core. It washed over her in waves, to the beat of her own heart.

Szereth screamed at her the moment she sheathed her blade. His tone was filled with both fury and disbelief.

“What in heavens are you doing? Quit playing around! At least put your gods-damned helmet on! Can’t you take this seriously!? Arrrgggh!”

Just like Szereth, her opponent panicked. But instead of launching an attack or a series of curses, he quickly moved into a defensive stance and turtled up.

“Since you’re not giving me an opening,” she said, “I’m just gonna have to take one from you!”

She rushed in with a feinted leap, and as he half-slashed into the air where she should have been, she ducked down and rocketed forward sharply. Her fist smashed straight into his stomach, which made a WHUMF sound as she dented his armor slightly.

He staggered back and slashed in the air defensively and did his best to keep her out of reach. What he needed most was a few moments to get balance back in his legs, and air back in his lungs.

But she didn’t give him any time to recover. Instead, she continued her bladedance and spun inside his defenses with great precision and timing. His slashes hit nothing but air as she wove her way through his wall of blades.

She struck at his abdomen with a backwards spinning elbow, which also left his armor dented, and knocked him back a couple of steps. As stars enveloped his vision, Eva spun towards him with increasing velocity, and threw a spinning side kick right at his chest.

The Drogar was thrown right out of the ring by the force of her blow. He flew several meters and landed in another ring altogether, and disrupted the fight that was occurring in it. Sand kicked up around him as he landed in an inglorious heap.

Eva immediately fell to one knee, her breaths ragged and deep. She had used up a great deal of stamina, and her heart was beating at a mile a minute.

While she recovered, her Seed Judge came up to her.

“Well, somehow you won, ape,” she said. “I suppose that means you qualify for the Seventh Tier, but again, don’t get your hopes up. You seem to have just pushed yourself incredibly hard on just the qualifying matches. You’re not gonna stand a chance against the real pros.”

It didn’t take long for Eva to recover enough energy to stand back up. On her face was a ridiculous grin.

“Yeah, well, now I know how well I stack up. Anyway, what’s my Seed?”

“Still being calculated. But I predict you’ll be in the top 100.”

“Jeez, that seems low. I thought you said the challenger was a good one.”

.....

The Judge simply rolled her eyes.

“The next best one would have put you somewhere between 100 and 200 instead. The one after that in the top 250 to 500. Would you have preferred either of those?”